Dr Don Powell Interview

A healthy, engaged, productive workplace is good for a company's bottom line.  And it turns out that a majority of employees say they want to take part in wellness programs and be engaged at work.  That's the finding of a recent Virgin Pulse survey of 3,822 employees at 361 different companies. 

But as Chris Boyce, the CEO of Virgin Pulse, points out:  “We’re in the midst of an engagement crisis.  Overall employee disengagement is being reported at 70 percent in the U.S. and even higher globally.  That means even on a good day, your employees aren’t tapping their full brainpower or reaching their full productivity potential.  Making an investment in employees and demonstrating a commitment to them and their well-being is a straightforward way to help employees make daily changes that lead to sustainable healthy behaviors and improvements in workplace engagement and productivity.”

(Source: Fort Mills Times, 6/2/14)

In our Good for You Conversation with Dr. Don Powell, President & CEO of the American Institute for Preventive Medicine, we asked him how to create a culture of wellness both in the workplace and at home.  Here is what he shared with us about motivating employees to take charge of their well-being.

Companies want their employees to stay healthier, which can mean lower healthcare costs, reduced absenteeism and increased productivity.  You believe in creating a culture of health both in the workplace and at home.  How can companies best go about that?

First, it involves leadership and people in the C-suite not only saying, but more importantly what are they doing, in terms of their actions.  Are they participating in the wellness program or simply telling their employees to do so?  You also want to look at the lower levels of the company, the grass roots people in the company, and getting their buy-in to wellness, so that you have wellness champions throughout the organization involving fellow employees in what’s going to be offered.

You also want to make healthy choices the easiest choices within the organization, so that when you get to the cafeteria it’s very easy to go through the salad bar and less convenient to order hamburgers or things form the grill that may not be as healthy.

A big thing in wellness now is online wellness challenges where people can work as teams trying to change behaviors– whether it’s eating more fruits and vegetables or exercising more, as well as competing with other parts of the organization in the process.  And people do like to compete.  That’s all part of how motivation can be enhanced.

I think you need to point out immediate benefits of changing behavior as opposed to long term consequences of that behavior.  We’re certainly motivated, as we know from behavioral psychology, by things that occur recently, or the immediate reward that may be given as opposed to something that’s a long term consequence.  When you’re trying to encourage somebody to quit smoking, it’s not so much you’re going to prevent lung cancer and heart disease 10 or 15 years down the road, but you’re going to be able to walk up a set of steps without gasping for breath.  You won’t have to endure the looks that your children give you every time you light up.

You’ve said that you think creating this culture should be fun.  Talk about the importance of laughter in adding to people’s well-being.

“He who laughs, lasts,” is something I like to say.  It’s been said that a good belly laugh is equivalent to having 2 tablespoons of oat bran in terms of health for the body.  I think we enjoy laughter.  We like to feel good about things and laughter is a representation of that.  Some organizations have laughologists come in and do laughter workshops and try to get people to see funny things around them.  Laughter and having a sense of humor is not just telling jokes, but being able to appreciate things around you that make you happy, make you laugh, that you enjoy.  That’s certainly a part of wellness.

Laughter is also a stress reliever.  What should companies be doing to help employees manage stress?

Stress is probably one of the least popular wellness programs.  I think only 14% of companies offer stress management programs and obviously that’s a big mistake, given that employees cite stress as being their number one reason for being less productive at work.  A whole bunch of literature shows people under lots of stress at work are more likely to not only get colds and flus, but more likely to get diseases like heart disease and cancer.  We need to get away from companies avoiding dealing with the issues of stress and pretending it doesn’t exist in their companies.

We need to help our employees manage it.  It’s not just relaxation techniques and cognitive coping skills to help people think differently about life events.  It’s also changing those things within the company that cause stress.  Time pressures, uncomfortable chairs, bad lighting, too much noise and so forth all factor into stress levels within an employee.

Many people are not getting enough sleep.  How does this impact employees in the workplace?

Yes, 30% of the U.S. population does not get an adequate amount of sleep and of course that factors into the workforce in terms of increased accidents on the job, errors, decreased productivity, presenteeism, where they’re at work, but they’re not performing optimally.  Companies are just starting to use the pun, “Wake up to the problems that sleep deprivation provides or causes.”

I think sleep is an issue you’re going to see more of.  The field of wellness goes through changes, just like any other field.  You see some things that are in vogue and popular in terms of programming that are kind of there for a while and then go away, and you see new things arising.  I mean, twenty years ago we didn’t really have stress management programs.

Stress is something that we all have to learn to live with.  How has technology impacted employees’ stress levels?

Some companies have implemented no cellphone or no emails after work hours, as it relates to work, because of that issue.  Employees are burning out because, in a sense, they are tied to their job 24/7 rather than the traditional 9-5 before technology existed.

I think cellphones actually decrease communication–people are more involved with what emails and texts are coming in, than having a conversation with who they are with.

Creating a culture of wellness for employees also means supporting them to create that culture at home.  How can companies get employees and their families to both participate?

Women make 80% of all healthcare decisions.  Employers that have a wellness program that has mostly a male population are really not getting at the key decision maker within the family.  We also know that employees are responsible for 30% of a company’s healthcare cost.  Dependents are responsible for the other 70%. 

Companies that are serious about creating a culture of health go beyond just those who work for the company to reach the families–whether it’s through a wellness newsletter that’s given to the family or providing them with a self-care book to help the family make better decisions about when to access care.  Allow spouses to participate in the same activities that the employee does, like the health assessment or biometric screening or the tobacco cessation or weight loss program, or the online wellness challenges.  We know that if your spouse smokes and you’re trying to quit, your chance of quitting is probably half that of a person whose spouse does not smoke.  So involving the entire family in all aspects of the wellness program becomes beneficial.

What can you do today to prevent problems tomorrow?  Talk about the importance of prevention when it comes to employee well-being and creating a culture of health.

We need to keep our healthy people healthy, because unfortunately low risk people won’t remain there and will gravitate towards a higher risk.  We want to get those people who have chronic conditions or other types of risk factors to be able to manage that chronic condition or reduce the risk.

I think the statistic is they [companies] may spend 1-2% on prevention and 98% on treatment as it relates to healthcare in America in individual organizations.  A wellness program is a small percentage of what a company spends on healthcare and that percentage really needs to be increased.

I think there are a couple of major things people can do.  Studies have shown as much as 7 years can be added to your life.  Some of the basics are:

• Eat breakfast every day.
• Certainly maintain an ideal weight for your height and body type.
• Exercise 3-4 times a week for at least 20-30 minutes each time. 
• Get 7-8 hours of sleep every evening. 
• Moderate you use of alcohol consumption. 
• And do something to manage stress levels, whether it’s meditation each day or a mental imagery relaxation exercise or breathing exercise.

Those kinds of basic things can certainly go a long way in terms of decreasing the likelihood of major illness down the road.

More on Don Powell:

Dr. Don R. Powell is the President and CEO of the URAC Accredited American Institute for Preventive Medicine located in Farmington Hills, Michigan.  For 31 years the Institute has been a leading developer and provider of health and productivity management programs.  It is internationally recognized for its ability to present health information in a format that employees can easily understand and are motivated to follow, thereby reducing health care costs and absenteeism. 

Dr. Powell is a licensed psychologist who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.  He also taught in the University’s Psychology Department for eight years where he was nominated for the “Distinguished Teaching Award” and presently serves as a guest lecturer.  Dr. Powell is considered one of the country’s foremost authorities on the design and implementation of community and corporate health management programs and has written 15 best-selling books, including Healthier at Home and 101 Ways to Well-Being.  

Sports Illustrated called his latest book, Best Sports Clichés “a home run.”  A highly acclaimed speaker, Dr. Powell has presented at over 500 conferences, been featured in newspapers like USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and appeared on numerous radio and TV programs including Good Morning America and Fox & Friends.